


Ever After

by TempestRising



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: DInner and a show, Fluff and Angst, Knight Harry, Lilo friendship, M/M, Medieval Times AU, Sexual Harassment, Waiter Louis, but there's real feelings, this is all a joke, waiter Liam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 15:41:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14047479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempestRising/pseuds/TempestRising
Summary: Medieval Times was a tacky permanent installation on one of the long highways just outside London. It attracted mostly hyperactive children on school trips and their bored (or horny) chaperones. Dinner was served at long tables facing a sandy pitch where the show took place - barely a show, Louis said, loudly and often. A badly written, badly acted, strung-together farce of horses and fake jousting by fake knights.Or: Louis is a lowly waiter who may or may not have slept with Harry, the red knight.





	Ever After

__

_"The very purpose of a knight is to fight on behalf of a lady."_

****

**Sir Thomas Mallory**

.***.

The lights were out when it happened, Liam said later when they were in the kitchen, filling trays with hot garlic bread. Part of the show at medieval Times, the lights going out and just the little table lanterns for illuminations. Sometimes Louis even thought that part of the show was beautiful. The swords were cheap and the dresses flimsy and the weapons made to splinter on command but that darkness was a real thing, a creeping, living darkness broken by candlelight. Very _Game of Thrones,_ Niall would say. Niall reckoned they'd be packed every day of the week if they could find a way around licensing to cash in on the _Game of Thrones_ crowd, and Louis told him to shut up and keep the good ideas to himself. That, for now, they just worked here.

And that was sort of the point of Liam's story. They just worked here. He and Liam were waiters during this dinner-and-a-show roadside attraction. They didn't sign up to be groped.

"I swear she put her hand on my ass," Liam complained, and his tone said this was a joke but his eyes weer serious and troubled. "She was reaching for my belt, mate. Long fingernails, too. Look." He lifted the long uniform shirt and turned so Louis could see the smooth, tan planes of his back broken by long pink scratches.

Louis whistled sympathetically. "Welcome to the club, lad. At least 's only women groping you." Men loved to grab Louis's bum as if he was part of the entertainment. And for all the managers did about the harassment, he might as well be. Louis got used to shaking off a man or two nightly.

"Her teeth were pointy," Liam said, piling garlic bread on Louis's tray. "Like a dragon. I thought she was going to eat me. Might still. I gotta get back."

"Point her out to me," Louis said. "I'll knock her cup over."

Liam squinted at him. "You actually would. That's the problem."

"Dead serious I would. Niall already has a claim to your ass."

The serious look was fading. Good. Best to get through the show, then laugh about it later with Niall, who looked at Liam like he hung the moon. "You should be one of the knights, Lou," Liam said. "Protective, you are. Loyal. Also violent."

"I'm the real deal," Louis agreed. "Too bad everything else here is fake."

They pushed out of the kitchen doors, back into the 2 o'clock show crowd.

Medieval Times was a tacky permanent installation on one of the long highways just outside London. It attracted mostly hyperactive children on school trips and their bored (or horny) chaperones. Dinner was served at long tables facing a sandy pitch where the show took place - barely a show, Louis said, loudly and often. A badly written, badly acted, strung-together farce of horses and fake jousting by fake knights. Outside the main stage/dining room was a tacky "castle" gift shop that sold bizarrely anachronistic crap, like fairy statues and dragon watches.

Louis had begun working here when he started university. As a waiter, the tips were usually good but, as Liam had discovered, some combination of the bad show and sudden darkness tended to make customers overly handsy. Most of the waitstaff of Medieval Times were men, because women, in their wench-like uniform shirts, were harassed early and often and fired when they complained.

Their managers were terrible,t the atmosphere the barely controlled chaos of a five-year-old's birthday party, the canned music was too loud and the chicken was over seasoned. Louis thought about quitting roughly every five minutes and told people he was quitting once an hour. But he stayed. Two summers in a row.

Because despite the bad food and the leering customers and overall tackiness, Medieval Times had four things going for it: close to home, close enough to walk; decent pay; weekend hours that let Louis go to summer classes; and good people.

All of their managers were shit, but the people Louis actually worked with? He'd never had friends like them. Liam, of course, fellow waiter in the trenches, always up for a pint after work, most likely to literally tuck drunk friends in bed, which he did for Louis once a week. But there was also Niall, working the merch counters, Irish and proud, had a running list of band names on his iPhone, most likely to swear like a sailor and demand a pint after dislocating his knee playing football. Again.

Louis also hung out with the "knights" (aka, the actually entertainment) lads on horses who were paid to play with fake swords. There was a quad of Australians: Luke, Ashton, Calum, and Mikey, all in the UK for school, all spending more time on horses or dicking around on guitars than hitting the books, most likely to spend the downtime between shows racing horses and betting on cricket matches. They had pop up gigs at pubs every weekend, their band name changing as quickly as Niall could print the flyers. Their whole friend group turned out in support, especially Louis. Not at all (entirely because) it was his one guaranteed night to see Harry.

Harry. Red knight on a white horse. Harry, who Louis had lusted after for two summers. Harry, who was most likely to be the patient zero of a Medieval Times mono outbreak. Who was charming and disarmingly generous with a molasses-slow voice and a tendency to run his hands through his hair. Most likely to make Louis lose sleep. Most likely to break his heart.

Harry, who Louis had slept with, finally, last weekend, after dancing together in the small pub to pop rock music and shitty beer, Harry large and grinding against him, Louis drunk on music and love and the smell of Harry, like soap and tea and England. Harry, who still hadn't texted him, not so much as a "how you doing" after slipping out bed, early and silent as the dawn.

Harry, who had trotted out to his place in the joust, flicking the horse's reigns and his own head so his hair - wonderfully long and as soft as it looked, Louis knew first hand - bounced. Louis swore he could hear several hundred preteen girls and their mothers sigh in unison. He, Louis, was definitely not one of them, and his stomach definitely didn't give an unsuitably girlish lurch when Harry scanned his section and smiled that long, lazy smile when their eyes met.

The Australians, on their own horses, snickered, and though Louis couldn't hear them from here he definitely knew that if those four knew then the whole fake castle knew. Louis turned to his tables and scooped garlic bread onto plates, bending his head to hide his blush.

Then - he had just given a little girl in a birthday hat an extra piece of bread, she looked exactly like his youngest sister - a gasp and a truncated scream from the crowd, nothing to do with the show, Louis knew, because that scream came from Liam.

Louis ditched his tray and took the steps two at a time up to Liam's section, where the younger boy looked impossibly small, bent away from a burly, balding man.

Louis put a hand on Liam's shoulder and it came away warm and wet and red. "Jesus - Liam!"

"It's soup," Liam said, quickly. "It's - she - and - it's just soup, Tommo."

"He had his hands all over my girl!" the burly man growled. He wouldn't look out of place as a troll in their show, thick-necked and hairy, staring at Liam venomously. "Fucking whore, begging for it all bloody evening and thinking I don't notice."

Liam was bent double, wiping soup out of his eyes, and even in the low light of the lanterns Louis could see his whole face flushing. Everyone in the section was looking at them instead of all the show. Liam was a good man in a fight and he was the first in with the extinguisher whenever the kitchen caught fire, which was often, but he couldn't stand being shouted at, made him go small and stuttering, and the fact that some bloke was yelling at him in the middle of the busy part of the shirt - that he'd call Liam, who lit up like a firefly around Niall - Liam a whore? Louis planted his body firmly between the troll and Liam.

"Lou," Liam moaned, "don't bother."

"Why don't you ask that girl of yours who's been begging for it all night?" Louis dared. The "girl" in question was thirty at least, seated, all big hair and small mouth and eyes like a bug. "I can see why. I'd sexually harass waitstaff too if the alternative was sleeping with you."

The troll was still focused on Liam, though, and pushed past Louis to grab the top of Liam's tunic, balling the fabric in a fisted hand.

"What's all this?" Nick Grimshaw's drawl was hardly above normal speaking volume but somehow reverberated around the small group anyway. "Liam, you're a wreck, go clean up. Louis, help him. Now, sir, were these boys bothering you?"

Grimshaw was their shift manager and he and Louis had reached a mutual loathing day one when their eyes met staring at Harry, but at least his timing had saved Louis from decking a guy with the IQ and mass of an elm tree. He hurried Liam away, stopping only to ask Ed if he and Perrie could please cover their tables, barely waiting for the ginger to nod before hauling Liam into the break room.

"Come on, lad, out of that shirt. Nothing I haven't seen before. Was the soup hot? Did it burn you? Wish I'd punched him, even if I'd probably broken me hand on that jaw."

"Ta," Liam croaked, tugging the soiled shirt over his head and using it to mop the soup off his face, frowning in disgust as he picked tomato chunks out of his hair.

Louis noticed at there were more scratches on Liam's body, this time on his front near his belt buckle. Louis tried not to stare as he handed Liam a spare uniform. "So," keeping his voice light even though the anger still burned in him like a flame, "what happened? You go Rambo on us?"

"She -" But Liam stopped again, shaking his head. "Touched. Tried to. It doesn't matter. I'm not," he laughed at himself, a forced jangle of a laugh, "some kid. She just - it makes you feel like meat, sometimes. You know? This job."

"I know," Louis said, and he wasn't thinking of having his ass groped in the aisles, he was thinking of waking up last weekend after the gig, gloriously sore and achingly alone. Used up. "I'm sorry, lad."

Liam touched the pink marks on his abs. "Stupid," he said, and Louis had nothing to say to that, so he just opened his arms and Liam stepped into them and the shouts and volleys of the fake tournament sounded outside but in here it was still and quiet and smelled strongly of horses and hay and home.

The door banged open and Liam turned, wiping a hand across his eyes. "I just heard," Niall Horan, hawker of plastic swords and pand promoter extraordinaire, rushed over to Liam but had his eyes on Louis. "Who are we killing?"

"I'll point him out," Louis promised. "His girl had his hands all over Li."

"I know," Niall said grimly. "Heard her complaining to Grimshaw. Claims Liam made a move first, that he fucking wanted it."

"I didn't!" Liam squeaked. "I'm sorry it was such a fuss, honestly..."

"Don't apologize," Niall spat, and the doors opened again.

"These swords are fake," Michael Clifford said in stead of hello. He was still outfitted in fake knight gear. "But they still hurt, I promise. Heard we're killing someone."

"Two someones," Louis said. The four Aussies, who traveled as a pack, all nodded. They were still holding weapons from the arena. In the dim light they looked almost convincing.

Liam slipping into his new shirt. "Lads," he protested, weakly.

And the door opened again. "You two are more trouble than you're worth," Nick Grimshaw declared. "I should sack you. Especially you, Tomlinson. This is the fourth guest this month I've refunded because of you."

"Stop refunding rapists," Louis suggested.

"Stop exaggerating," Grimshaw shot back. "Liam's a big boy. He can handle himself, can't you Payno?"

"He shouldn't have to!" Louis roared. "That's not his job. If you'd listen to us for once - "

"Careful, darling, you swing that fist at me and you might break a nail."

Louis felt like he had a mouthful of blood, hot and pulsating. Only Liam flinching beside him at the raised voices stopped Louis from responding in kind.

Grimshaw snorted at the silence. "Niall, I believe you're supposed to be working? Actually, aren't all of you being paid to be somewhere else right now?"

Niall patted Louis's shoulder and hugged Liam before filing out the door with the Australians.

"Nick," Liam began, in that tone Louis had grown to hate, the conciliatory, peacemaker tone. "I'm sorry."

Louis made a sound like a hiss, like a tea kettle, or a disgruntled cat.

Grimshaw pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "You good for the end of the shift?" Liam nodded. He was the definition of a team player. "You all right?" Liam nodded again, a little reluctantly. "Good lad. Out, then. You know how much the guests love their chicken."

Liam tugged his shirt down, smoothing it over the cuts Louis knew were there, and hurried past Grimshaw, but Louis was caught on the shoulder as he tried to leave. "I mean it, Tomlinson. Everyone else manages to go about their shifts without pissing off guests. You make me refund one more ticket this month and you're out."

"Whatever," Louis huffed, shrugging out of Grimshaw's grip. "Not like I need this place, anyway." A lie, but a plausable one. He had scholarships. He could get by.

"No," Grimshaw agreed, "but Liam does, doesn't he? You've made yourself a package deal mate. One toe out of line and I'll sack both of you."

Louis could do little more than stare, incredulous. "You can't be serious?" He was pretty sure this was illegal, some sort of blackmail or - or something. But it was true that while Louis could get by until school started again in the fall, Liam couldn't. His mother had some sort of medical scare in the spring and Liam had missed so much school to be with her that he'd lost his scholarship. The only way he could afford to go back to school in the fall was by taking every shift he could and saving like a miser.

"Just keep your tongue to yourself, darling, and you'll be fine." Grimshaw gave Louis a smile that couldn't be more condescending if he'd reached out and patted him on the head like a child. "Go on then. Run along."

Fuming, but aware that there was still a show on, and a section he needed to take back from Ed Sheeran, Louis stomped out of the break room and ran, literally, straight into Harry, who was walking down the show corridor with his horse.

"Fuck," Louis fell backwards, and only Harry's quick hands kept him from landing in a new steaming pile of horse shit. "Fuck," Louis said again. "Exactly what I need right now, Styles. Brilliant."

"Sorry?" Harry put two hands on Louis once he was upright, patting him bracingly. "I just - I heard about Liam. Wanted to see if he was okay."

"He's fine," Louis spat. "What do you even care, anyway?"

Harry wilted a bit, eyes dropping to the floor. "I - er - I just - thought we were friends?"

"How's that going for you?" Louis asked. "Thinking? Because last I checked friends don't fuck around and then just conveniently forget to call." Louis held up his hands. Casper, Harry's horse, whinnied softly, and Louis couldn't help giving his white, white nose a stroke. "You know what? I can't do this right now. I need to get through this fucking show."

"Come find me after," Harry asked, his voice going up at the end. Hopeful. Questioning. "Or I can find you? Please?"

Casper nuzzled into Louis's hand, his grey eyes, lined by long, grey eyelashes, fluttering shut. Louis had always seen a lot of Harry in his horse. Maybe he was reading into it. He left Harry in the corridor, and went back out into the show.

Ed had refilled his section's drinks and brought half of them chicken and, upon seeing Louis, dumped off a tray of enormous chicken breasts on him. "Not too bad, mate, everyone's been pretty patient. Liam all good?"

Louis nodded, and promised to split his tip with Ed and Perrie, but Ed waved him off. They'd all done this for each other. Louis felt another surge of love for his coworkers. Dressed like serving boys (the girls actually, literally called "serving wenches") and living off tips, picking paper crowns off the floors between shows, dealing with endless birthday parties, and still these made him want to come to work.

It occurred to Louis that, for all his complaining - and there was a lot to complain about - he actually didn't want to lose this job. Not just for Liam, but for himself.

He focused on his section, getting everyone caught up in the dinner. The show was timed, each scene corresponding to a giving or clearing up of a course. If Louis hurried, he wouldn't even be behind. In the arena, the Australians were lining up for a duel, victor gets the hand of the princess, an enormously plain girl with a thick Welsh accent who was, outside of the show, already married to a boy in the RAF. He came by the show once, knowing enough about weapons to scare anyone away from actually wanting the princess.

Luke fought Harry and lost, Ashton fought Zayn and lost, Zayn fought Michael and lost, Michael fought Calum and lost. Everything, from the unhorsings to the blows, were choreographed and scripted. Calum, yellow knight, versus Harry, red knight. Awesome. Wow.

Cake for dessert. Louis ran into Liam in the kitchen. "Alright, love?"

"I switched sections with Perrie," Liam said, a touch embarrassed. "Those, um, that woman and her boyfriend, they stayed, and Perrie has it in hand, so, you know..."

"And I'm sure if Perrie doesn't have it in hand, Zayn would skin 'em alive." Louis dropped a cake and it broke. He popped half in his mouth and gave half to Liam, who didn't like sweets but loved to give extras to the little girls at his tables. He wondered if he should tell Liam about Grimshaw's threat, but decided against it. He would be playing the choir boy from now on. Only three weeks left before fall term began, anyway. Louis could be good for three weeks.

Harry and Calum were battling it out with swords. Something about the lighting and the fog effects made them look almost dashing, and Louis stared and Harry's whirling red cloak for several seconds before a little boy snatched cake from Louis's tray and Louis was startled back to his job.

Sword effects over the loud speakers. Louis's biceps had a better workout here at work than he'd ever gotten in sports classes in school. A boy and girl were hitting each other with fake swords and as soon as Louis set down their cake the girl smashed the whole brown mess into the boy's face. Louis expected the parents, seated nearby, to intervene, but the mother was staring at Calum in the arena and the father patted Louis's bum as he walked by, and the children screeched.

All the warm fuzzy feelings about this place dissipated, and Louis remembered why he was always threatening to quit.

Harry won and was given the princess's hand in marriage, because that's how these things worked apparently, Calum dragged out of the arena as if he'd died, violence apparently romantic at the end of the day. No wonder they were always being hit on. The show itself equated acts of force with acts of love.

Louis was busy writing a speech in his head to give to Grimshaw later or, more likely, to shout about at the pub with the lads, getting wonderfully smashed after this terrible day, and so he barely noticed the end of the show. Harry got a sash, was told to present it to someone in the audience. The queen of love and beauty. And another thing, Louis added to his speech. Gender conforming roles. Harry as straight as a circle. Why couldn't he find a nice king of love and beauty? Settle down? Let the Welsh girl and her RAF lad make some nice, completely non-understandable Welsh babies?

He watched Harry come up into the audience. There was usually a toddler who got the sash, some little girl with grubby fingers and a big smile, and it was honestly Louis's favorite part of the whole show.

In the section above him, the section that used to be Liam's, Perrie patiently poured a goblet full of diet soda all over the trollish man, who roared. Grimshaw would pop a vein. Perrie walked calmly away. Louis, and a lot of people in the section, began to clap.

Harry was getting closer, scanning Louis's yellow section with his fluttering pink sash. 

Liam bounced over to Louis, grinning, "Wish I'd been the one to do it," he said, one hand rubbing absently at his stomach where the scratches were. "Can't wait to tell Niall!"

A cough at Louis's elbow. Liam melted away. Louis turned around, and Harry draped the pink sash over Louis's head.

"But why does he get to be a queen?" A girl asked somewhere to Louis's right. "He's a boy!"

Louis looked at Harry. "Yeah," he echoed, voice pitched low, just for Harry to hear. "I'm a boy."

"My boy," Harry said, shrugging. He looked dashing. The cloak and the breastplate, the way his curls tumbled down the long column of his throat, his cheeks pink from exertion, the fake sword hanging from his belt. Louis understood why ladies in tall towers used to wait for knights to rescue them. He thought he could wait, too, if it meant Harry looking at him like this. And he had waited. For a week. For two long, longing summers.

Love and beauty, the sash said, and Louis almost believed it.

Harry adjusted the sash, his arms encircling Louis's neck, and if they were in a different place, at a different time, he might have kissed him, an end of the movie, post-misunderstandings, cue-the-credits type of kiss. But they were at work, and there was already a lot of murmuring that was turning sour, and they were still, still, in the middle of a show.

"Find me after?" Harry asked again.

Louis fingered the pink fabric. Plastic. Flimsy. Gossamer in the light. And this time, he said, "yes."

After the show, after Louis and Liam lifted Perrie onto their shoulders and gave her Louis's sash and declared her queen of love and beauty, after they cleaned up the stands and everyone piled crowns onto Niall's head, balancing ten, twelve, eighteen on top of each other before they all fell off, after Niall dragged Liam away to give him a good look-over and the Australians whistled them down the hall, after the horses were seen to and the tables reset and everyone was had gathered for the post-show meeting, Louis found Harry untacking Casper.

"You coming to the pub tonight? Niall's trying out a new band name."

Harry straightened up, wiping his hands on his pants. "You gave away your sash."

"Perrie deserved it. Did you see her get that guy? Besides, now you have an excuse to give me another one."

"As many as it takes," Harry promised. His eyes were looking everywhere but at Louis, and he took a deep breath. "Look. Okay. Last week? Was great. You were - great. The whole night, dancing and, you know. Later. It was all -"

"Great?" Louis suggested.

"I made you cry," Harry said, cutting off Louis's planned joke. "During. After. I don't know. I woke up, and I looked at you, and you were so gorgeous, but you'd been crying. I could tell. I hurt you, and then I hurt you by running."

Louis didn't know what to say to that. "I think," he said, slowly, "the second bit hurt more. Also, the not texting or communicating all week."

Harry looked at his feet. "I'm more of an actions kind of person." He put an arm around Casper. Looked like he needed something to keep him on his feet. "I won't be a good boyfriend. I get jealous, all the time. Even when you're just talking to Liam and Niall. And I'm a flirt, so you're going to get jealous. And sometimes I'm going to want to sleep out here with the horses." Harry laughed at himself. "I'm a - I'm a right mess."

"Sure," Louis said. "But I'm pretty good at messes. Do you know how many younger sisters I have?"

They had stepped closer. There was darkness here, too. In between the horse's stables and behind Harry's show cloak, a real darkness that they could hide in. To be secret. To make themselves real.

Louis wanted to tell Harry that he was an awfully good knight. That he loved how much he loved his horse. That he thought, given time, he could love every inch of Harry.

But then they kissed, and the darkness swallowed him whole, and Louis thought that it could all wait for later, that all the good and bad things of the day could wait. That perhaps this is what all the stories meant, no matter how silly, or old, or childish, when they talked about happily ever afters.

**Author's Note:**

> This entire thing is a joke between me and my little sister, who entertained ourselves at Medieval Times last weekend by talking through this AU. The combination of a freak snow day and procrastination led to me actually writing it down. Hopefully someone out there (other than me and my sister) get as much of a kick out of this as we did.


End file.
